Poetry
Om de zon
Not translated into English
Synopsis
Eighty untitled poems, divided into six parts, form a love cycle, a journey towards union with the beloved that sets out from the Bay of Bengal and leads as far as Curaçao. An opening prose piece evokes the crossing of the indentured labourers who came from India to an island. Then come the farewell to the island and to the beloved, then a stay in a northern country, in rain, snow and fog. Sun, water and wind carry a meditation in which love and death meet.
Context
The collection appeared in 1972 in Paramaribo, at the author's expense, for want of a literary publisher in Suriname; with some hundred and twenty-five pages, it is the largest of the work. Written mainly in Curaçao and partly in the Netherlands, it was almost finished when the poet returned to Suriname in 1968, and it breaks with the grey visions of the earlier books. Geert Koefoed also reads in it an image of the task of the Hindustani immigrants in Suriname, and the cycle unites Hinduism and Christianity. Part of the poems was taken up in the anthology Een weinig van het andere, selected by Koefoed in 1984.
Who it is for
For discovering the great poetic voice of the Hindustanis of Suriname, readable only in Dutch.
Prizes and reception
The review Streven sees in this book a turn towards a seething life and hails its author as the first troubadour of the Caribbean.
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The pages consulted to check this page.